Customer Anti-Support
Email support can be great or it can suck horribly. It’s a spectrum. For my own products and services, my average email response time is around 1 hour in general, and 5 minutes if I am online. Seriously, I am right there ready and glad to help anyone who needs it. Contrast that strategy to what seems to be the typical email support response time of an entire day or much longer. It’s just crazy to have to wait that […] Continue reading »
My Wish List for Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2
As a teenager, I played the original Legend of Zelda game when it launched on the first Nintendo console (NES). Back then, us neighborhood kids had a blast playing that game for hours on end. Fast-forward to adulthood, it’s a joy watching my own kids play the various sequels: Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and to some degree, Skyward Sword. Beyond watching my kids play, I didn’t really get into playing any of the Zelda sequels. […] Continue reading »
HTML Abbreviations Cheat Sheet
Here is my custom list of abbreviations for commonly used terms, as written via HTML’s <abbr></abbr> tag. I’m posting this to make it available to anyone who finds it useful. Very handy when writing tutorials related to WordPress, web design and development. A quick copy/paste is much quicker than typing it all out. Without further ado, here is my “cheat sheet” of HTML abbreviations. Continue reading »
When, Where, and How to Ask for Help: The Three Golden Rules
When working online or offline in the real world, it’s inevitable that you will encounter issues and problems with products, services, and everything else. This quick post explains when, where, and how to ask for help: The Three Golden Rules. It’s a general guide, aimed at those who may be unfamiliar. Continue reading »
Purging Unused Data
As part of my yearly maintenance routine, I spend time each year going through a list of annual tasks. Things like archiving backups, removing unused apps, and of course purging and organizing data. As an aspiring minimalist, my approach is less is more. I am always downloading, consuming content, yes. But also I am constantly deleting and pruning as much as possible. It is a discipline and an art. Continue reading »
BBQ Firewall – Count Blocked Requests
BBQ Firewall is built to be powerful, lightweight, fast and flexible. It’s code base is kept super lean, leaving extra functionality out of core while supporting new features via simple addons. For example, this tutorial shows how to use an addon to display the total number of blocked HTTP requests on the plugin settings page. This can help you get a basic idea of the plugin’s effectiveness. Continue reading »
Plugin Planet 2021 Redesign
Finally! Writing this post is the final step in the 2021 redesign of my WordPress plugins site, Plugin Planet. The site launched seven years ago in 2014. I think I spent a couple of months or so building the original site to the best of my ability. That first design stood the test of time, and honestly it would have been fine for another couple of years or more. But after seven years of changes, modifications, swapping out plugins, adding […] Continue reading »
All CSS Filter Functions + Quick Copy/Paste Examples
CSS makes it easy to customize image appearance on the fly. So you don’t have to crank open your image editor and do any work there. You can apply many visual effects directly on the image using the CSS filter property. You can change image brightness, contrast, opacity, saturation — even do things like rotate hues, drop shadows, and blur the image. Browser support is solid for all major browsers. Continue reading »
shapeSpace Lite WordPress Theme
Quick post to announce a new Lite version of my free shapeSpace starter theme. I develop and use shapeSpace for many of my WordPress-powered projects. The lightweight bare-bones template speeds up development by providing everything I need to create awesome themes. When it’s time to build a new site, or redesign an existing one, I download a copy of shapeSpace and I’m off to the races. Continue reading »
The Plan for 2019
The “Plan” for 2019: keep working hard and doing your best. Everything else will happen on its own. Less worry, less stress, less time in front of a screen. Work smarter, enjoy life more. You know, the usual inspiring things that people say as a new year unfolds. In short, go with the flow and stay focused. Continue reading »
Apple AirTag Review
Recently learned about Apple AirTag. Which is a small round device that you can put in your bag or whatever to track its location anywhere. Think I need to try one of those cool little gadgets. Here’s my experience in a nutshell.. Continue reading »
Video Course: WordPress on Shared Hosting
After months of hard work, my latest LinkedIn/Lynda.com video course has launched! The course walks through the entire process of getting WordPress installed and running on shared hosting. If you’re new to WordPress or the Internet in general, and want to start your own WordPress-powered website, this course will help you do it as quickly and inexpensively as possible. Continue reading »
WordPress: Display Posts on a Page with Paging and Navigation
In WordPress themes and plugins, the Loop is used to display posts on the front end. Typically the Loop displays either a single post (like when you’re viewing a blog post), or multiple posts (like when you’re viewing a category archive). Things get more tricky however, when you want to display posts on a page. Continue reading »
Apple Nags Killing UX
Heads up! This post is a giant rant about Apple screwing up the user experience (UX). If that is not what you want to read, then now is your chance to hit that back button and escape. Otherwise, if you feel like hearing all about it, continue reading. With Apple devices in the past, you could log in to an Apple account or not. No hassles. No worries. Just enjoy the software. Enjoy that super smooth Apple user experience. Right? […] Continue reading »
New Book: Wizard’s SQL Recipes for WordPress
I’m excited to launch my latest web-dev book, Wizard’s SQL Recipes for WordPress. I got the idea for this book way back when I was first learning how to build dynamic websites. I thought it would be useful to bring together all of the best SQL snippets in sort of a “spellbook” or “cookbook”. After all, SQL queries can seem like magic to the uninitiated. By entering concise, well-crafted commands, SQL enables anyone to interact with any relational database. It’s […] Continue reading »
Back Into It
This year has been full of change, hard work, and lots of planning. First it was general clean-up, reorganization, and streamlining of online assets (e.g., axing unused domains, consolidating email addresses, closing old social media accounts, etc.). That may not sound like a lot of work, but after 15+ years working online, it was a LOT of stuff to go through and get organized. My goal is to simplify my process down to a focused stream of activity. This post […] Continue reading »
